I've been covering the business of news, information and entertainment in one form or another for more than 10 years. In February 2014, I moved to San Francisco to cover the tech beat. My primary focus is social media and digital media, but I'm interested in other aspects, including but not limited to the sharing economy, lifehacking, fitness & sports tech and the evolving culture of the Bay Area. In past incarnations I've worked at AOL, Conde Nast Portfolio, Radar and WWD. Circle me on Google+, follow me on Twitter or send me tips or ideas at jbercovici@forbes.com.

The parallels between Armstrong and Mayer are striking, if mostly cosmetic. Armstrong was 38 when AOL hired him away from Google to be its third CEO in four years. Mayer is 37 and steps onto an even faster-moving merry-go-round, becoming the fifth chief in five years. On the other hand, Armstrong is a sales guy and Mayer is an engineer, a difference that could tell more than any surface-level similarity.

Still, there’s much that Mayer can learn from a close reading of Armstrong’s first couple years on the job. As a former employee of AOL, I was on hand for most of that period, and I’ve covered the rest of it closely. A few thoughts:

1. Don’t underestimate the dysfunctionality of the organization you’re inheriting. AOL was founded in 1985. Yahoo was started in 1994. In both cases, that’s a lot of time for a big company to grow weird and sclerotic. When a big, many-layered organization goes through round after round of downsizing with no clear logic, as both AOL and Yahoo have, what takes place is an unfortunate sort of natural selection. The people who survive are the sorts of employees whose skill set is primarily adapted to surviving downsizing — keeping their heads down, justifying their existence by scheduling meetings and writing memos, hiring less competent underlings who won’t threaten their jobs and can be easily let go when the next round of layoffs comes. That was certainly the case at AOL.

Like AOL, Yahoo is a lot smaller than it used to be, but its ranks are still full of professional layoff-survivors. I have no idea how Mayer is supposed to weed these people out, but it may be the most important thing she does.

2. What worked at Google won’t necessarily work at Yahoo. To an extent, Yahoo hired Mayer for not just who she is but what she represents: a Google-y way of doing things, of seeing the world and solving problems. That’s fine, but it can be taken too far.

That’s what Armstrong did when he attempted to import Google’s hiring practices wholesale. Google developed its methods as a way of finding some of the smartest engineers on the planet. But Google doesn’t do content (though it has started to, in limited ways). At AOL — as at Yahoo — journalism and entertainment are the primary areas of focus. Creative people aren’t like engineers. You can’t find the best ones by screening for “cultural fit” and “project management skills.” In fact, the most brilliant ones are often the worst at those things. If you don’t believe me, drop by any newsroom or Hollywood writers’ room.

3. The boss doesn’t get to fall in love. In some ways, Armstrong has been a model of flexibility in his CEO tenure, a paragon of the pivot. For instance, it was only a matter of weeks after he adopted “The AOL Way” that he ditched it and bought the Huffington Post instead.

Where he’s been less flexible is with his commitment to Patch, the hyperlocal news network he founded and brought in-house. Patch’s ongoing losses (about $150 million last year) are one of the prime points of contention between AOL and unhappy investors like Starboard Value. Armstrong says Patch will start making money by the end of 2013. Even if that proves true, Patch will have to do a lot more than just break even to justify all the investment AOL has sunk into it.

There’s an adjustment in mindset required when one ascends to the top job. Second-tier executives have to be advocates. It’s only by championing their own causes that they can win advancement. A CEO needs to be more dispassionate. If Mayer is smart, she’ll avoid having any darlings she can’t bear to kill.

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Nice try, Pete. Forbes hired me straight from AOL, months before the layoffs in my department hit. What I left with wasn’t bitterness but frustration. It was an annoying place to work if you prefer getting stuff done to talking about getting stuff done. That said, AOL treated me wonderfully. They paid well and gave me a preposterous degree of freedom, including a 4-day work week. I found people at all levels of the organization to be extremely nice. But I try not to let that affect my analysis, just as I would try not to let poor treatment slant my coverage if that had been the case.

Interesting…I would have thought the people who survive layoffs are the type who are valuable to company…either they’re making money or saving money. Forbes obviously thought you were going to make them money….that probably wasn’t the case at AOL. It may not have been your fault either…maybe the platform didn’t have the reach or quality that Forbes has. It’s hard for me to believe in your role at AOL that you’re any sort of expert on assessing the business as a whole…you probably had very limited visibility into the operations.

The idea of a layoff is obviously to retain the most vital people, just like the idea of antibiotics is to kill all the bad microbes and keep all the good ones. It doesn’t always work out that way. After a series of poorly-handled downsizings, sometimes your company comes down with the corporate equivalent of MRSA.

My visibility into AOL’s operations isn’t just from working there. It’s also from covering the company, not just in this column but also in a long and deeply reported feature for which I interviewed numerous past and current executives, as well as analysts and investors. Between the two, yeah, I have a pretty good grasp on what was working and what wasn’t during Tim Armstrong’s first couple years at AOL, at least in the media operations. If you have cause to think otherwise, if you have conclusions that differ from my own, by all means, let’s hear them.